When they did finally pass, they were one of the few situations where they initially received a CBT fail, and then later were notified by the SOA that they had actually passed.

If I hadn't seen the documentation for myself, I would have been skeptical that they had actually pulled it off.

I could be wrong, but doesn't the SOA say that the CBT preliminary pass is incredibly reliable and has only ever had one issue that resulted in the preliminary results being different than the official result? And that was early on too.

I'm assuming either:
1) you're friend is mistaken
2) is that one person early on
3) The SOA doesn't inform us of the times the prelim=/= official, and there's no way they'd do that

There was an AO poster whose name when I started posting was "4 Time Course 4 Loser" with an auto-sig that read "Actually now I'm a 6 Time Course 4 Loser, but who's counting" or something close to that. I think he (pretty sure it was a guy) changed his handle to "6 Time Course 4 Loser" and then upon passing it on the 7th try to "Course 4 Escapee".

Also... can't for the life of me think of the name (handle), but there was a poster who was active in the Course 3 / Exam M threads where literally every time he took the exam, the pass mark was 1 higher than what he scored. He joked about providing a service to the SOA that they didn't have to bother thinking about the pass mark... just pull up his exam and see what he got and set the pass mark 1 higher.

I can't remember if he ever passed or eventually gave up.

It's going to drive me crazy that I can't remember his name.

__________________
Originally Posted by GandalfThe thing that is clearest is twig's advice

I could be wrong, but doesn't the SOA say that the CBT preliminary pass is incredibly reliable and has only ever had one issue that resulted in the preliminary results being different than the official result? And that was early on too.

I'm assuming either:
1) you're friend is mistaken
2) is that one person early on
3) The SOA doesn't inform us of the times the prelim=/= official, and there's no way they'd do that

This happened almost ten years ago, so yes it was early on.

I've heard it's something like three times the prelim result has been different from the official result, but I don't have an official source on that.

I saw proof of my friend's claim, so...yeah. I wouldn't have believed it otherwise.

My personal highest number of exam attempts was five. I probably would have just given up (and I was considering doing so after the fourth fail), but it was my last requirement for FSA besides the FAC and I worked too hard to give it all up.

And then two weeks before I got the result that I had passed, I was laid off and was looking for a non-actuarial job because I was over the whole occupation.

It's almost like you assumed that the earth is flat and managed to conclude that the earth is flat.

You compare me to someone who thinks the earth is flat because I've used preliminary exam concepts heavily while working as an actuary and believe the exams could do a better job of producing candidates that notice and apply these concepts on the job?

I've also had coworkers who were eternal analysts who gave up after taking a prelim X times, which I suspect were higher than that of my friend, but I never asked. One woman who was in her late 30s was out of the program, but still sitting for exams, and was rumored to have taken MLC (and its past equivalent) over 25 consecutive sittings.